Anyone eating black eyed peas and ham today? Cornbread?
I never associated a particular food with new years day - not something in my family’s traditions. But I was thinking of pulling a ham steak out of the freezer, and I have some cabbage to go with it. Or maybe I’ll make shrimp. Or order a pizza. Too early to decide what to have for supper.
The only food I even loosely associate with New Year’s is turkey soup. And that’s just because it’s around the time to use up the Christmas dinner leftovers.
Family here made up of Yankees and Southerners. We have pork roast, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes for the Yanks, and add collards, black eyed peas and stewed tomatoes for the Rebs.
Black eyed peas are simmering right now and for about another hour; dried beans take a while to cook. I like canned black eyed peas but for New Year’s I go the traditional route. I grew up in the “black eyed peas on New Year’s Day” tradition, but in my family it didn’t necessarily include ham (and never collard greens, which I’ve actually never eaten); I usually have bacon with them, and that’s the plan this year.
We have a New Year’s Eve meal tradition. We go to a local wholesale seafood company and buy a couple of live Maine lobsters.
Last night’s dinner was a couple of boiled lobsters with melted butter, homemade coleslaw, and grilled Italian bread.
My stepmother did black-eyed-peas on NYD, but as a transplant she never added the necessary salt pork to make them taste good. Bleh. I am not a fan of collards (or any other greens), with or without hot sauce/vinegar/whatever.
However, I love cornbread, and now I might need to make some!
Isn’t it supposed to be hog jowl? Plain ole ham might not work.
Hog jowl is pretty country and I don’t think you can buy hog jowl at most supermarkets.
Since today is a beach day, we get salt water taffy.
(& if we go to the diner for lunch {as opposed to getting pizza} a nice cuppa hot soup is always good!)
My friend made me a black eyed peas dip. No pork though, she’s a vegan.
We were planning to… We had the black-eyed please and back cooking, when our neighbor knocked on the door with a big pot of pozole (she made “way too much”, apparently). So we had that on the 1st, and saved our original dinner for last night.
As I’ve been taught the tradition, by my Ohioan mother, any pork product will do. So bacon counts.
She grew up with pork roast and cabbage, or sauerkraut (which is supposed to represent money coming you the new year), but after thirty-odd years in the South, she’s learned the importance of collard greens and black-eyed peas. I didn’t manage to get either on January 1, but I did eat a piece of ham, as a ritual nod to the lares and penates.
We always have Chinese food, left over from New Year’s Eve.
Lots of people in Scotland have steak pie on New Years Day
My parents make pork and sauerkraut. Awful stuff. I’ll take my chances without your good luck food.
Southern tradition is:
Collard Greens = Money
Black Eyed Peas = Good health
Pork (fatback, jowls, ham, something) = General good luck
Yeah, I had a few friends over and we did that. Then one of the friends was helping me clean up and, before I could stop her, had dumped about 1/2 a pot of collard green leftovers down the disposal.
Yeah, that did not work. $420 for the plumber to unstop the main sewer line.
So, I’m swearing off the New Years dinner tradition. Chinese for me next year!! 
I cooked a porkloin in a Dutch oven, but with a tomatoe based Italian sauce instead of traditional sauerkraut. Toward the end I added kale, picked from the garden (final harvest of the year).
For a couple years we did a boneless leg of lamb the day after Christmas. Didn’t have a chance this year, so it got pushed back to New Years Day.
I always use the leftovers for lamb curry the following evening.